There are two topics that can make by blood boil. One is politics. The other is the Red Sox. There are people who generally know this…and use it frequently to get me going. It’s not unusual for baseball talk to start now. Pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in just about two weeks. Hope springs eternal. I’ve been hearing a lot of criticism about the moves the Red Sox made over the off season, mostly comments like, “Oh, they didn’t do enough.” I just shake my head and say, “Ok. Whatever.” But under my breath, I’m saying, “WTF do you know? There wasn’t anything out there to do anything with!”

Today, I was working at my retail establishment slogging coffee when my baseball pal, Hank, asked, ‘What do you think of the defensive moves the Red Sox made during the off season?” It was nice to hear somebody ask the question rather than make a pronouncement that the Sox didn’t do enough. My reply? “I think what Theo Epstein focused on was the right thing.” Hank, to my surprise, agreed! Hell, it’s not that I wouldn’t have welcomed Jason Bay back. I sure would have. I loved him last year. However, it didn’t work out that way. It’s just that I don’t think we’re in dire straits without him.

Why the Sox did the right thing

WTF is wrong with winning ball games by working at the fundamentals? That’s basically what Theo has done. He concentrated on the fundamentals by bolstering the defense and shoring up the pitching staff. Rather than blow half the minor league prospects and a ton of cash on what was out there for sluggers this off season, Epstein instead focused on run prevention. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many 40-home run hitters you have if you can’t field the ball cleanly and stop the other team’s hitters.

In 2009, Boston had a .986 fielding percentage, a statistic that did not sit well with Epstein. Without question, the weakest position on the club over the past few years has been shortstop. Last year alone, Dustin Pedroia played with four different middle infielders, Nick Green, Jed Lowrie, Julio Lugo and Alex Gonzalez. By far, Lugo was the man who booted the ball the most. Every fielding opportunity became an adventure. This wasn’t the norm for Lugo, but he soon became an expendable error headcase and was traded. Nick Green, never really a front-line player, got more playing time as a result of Lugo’s departure, but had his share of errors. Jed Lowrie, once considered the heir to the throne at short, suffered with wrist problems for most of the year. Alex Gonzalez was a great second-half acquisition. He played with the Sox before and has always been a great, sure-handed defensive player. He certainly lived up to that reputation during the second half of 2009. And, although he was a surprise at the plate, over the long haul the Sox wanted a more consistent hitter out of the shortstop position. They, therefore, chose not to exercise Gonzalez’s option.

With Nick Green filing for free agency and going to the Dodgers, Alex Gonzalez gone to the Blue Jays, and Jed Lowrie’s health a giant question mark, the focus had to become finding a credible shortstop. Sorry, folks, but this is a critical position in baseball. Enter Marco Scutaro, formerly of the Toronto Blue Jays. Scutaro may not be a spectacular defensive player, but he is a steady and reliable fielder, something that the Sox have been missing at the shortstop position. Let’s add to that some solid 2009 hitting statistics, like a .282 batting average, 60 RBI, 100 runs scored, 35 doubles and a .379 OBP, and I think the Sox improved themselves immensely at short.

So, we have Youk at first, Pedroia at second, and Scutaro at short. What’s the next step? How about landing arguably the best fielding third baseman in baseball. Enter Adrian Beltre, a two-time Gold Glove winner. Last year, Beltre alone started two fewer 5-4-3 double plays than the entire Red Sox team did all year. I’m not going to waste my time arguing that his offense was suspect in 2009, but I can tell you that this eight-minute defensive highlight reel will make you care a bit less about his offensive prowess. In spite of that, I expect that hitting in Fenway Park will improve Beltre’s offensive performance.

Sayonara, Jason Bay

There’s no question that failing to sign Jason Bay was a missed opportunity, particularly since he gave us 36 home runs and 119 RBI in 2009 (making up nicely for Manny Ramirez). It would have been great to make all of the above infield improvements and keep Bay in left field. It didn’t work out that way for various reasons, and Bay wound up signing with the Mets. In response, Epstein went out and picked up Mike Cameron, giving him the center field position and moving Jacoby Ellsbury to left.

While people are dumping on his offense, the fact is that at 37, he hit 24 homers last year, knocked in 70 runs and had a .342 OBP and .452 slugging percentage. He isn’t exactly chopped liver and, like Beltre, he should do well in Fenway Park. He’s a better fielder than Jason Bay, with a wicked arm. He’s speedy and will cover a lot of ground in center field. Best of all, he’s a three-time Gold Glover winner.

The Red Sox have also signed Jeremy Hermida (RF), who made his major league debut in 2005. The thinking is that this guy hasn’t yet come into his own and they are hoping he will in a Red Sox uniform. We’ll see what happens, but he’s ready to contribute even though he is not projected to be an every day player.

The final piece of the puzzle

So there we have it, a much improved defense in 2010. The final piece was shoring up the pitching staff. The Sox did that by signing free agent John Lackey. I like this move. We’ve added Lackey to a pitching staff that includes John Lester, Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Clay Bucholtz, and Tim Wakefield. Who has a better starting rotation? Come on, people. Let’s get serious. And forget about the people saying Wake will come out of the bullpen. That’s not going to happen. We really don’t know how the starters are going to shake out just yet, but it’s better to have more than not enough because there are plenty of opportunity for injuries during a 162-game campaign. A team can never have too much starting pitching, as we saw in 2009.

As for the relief staff, Epstein signed Papelbon for another year, along with Hideki Okajima, Ramon Ramirez and Manny Delcarmen. We still have Daniel Bard, who is the future closer. My guess is that, with the loss of Billy Wagner, the Sox are not yet done here. We’ll have to see.

So, WTF is wrong with you people?

I know. I know. We didn’t go out and pick up another Manny Ramirez. I’m really sorry about that. Unfortunately, the 2010 crop of free agents will be a hell of a lot better than the 2009 class. Those that were worth going after were simply asking for way too much, like Jacoby Ellsbury and Bucholtz in the same deal. Not going to happen.

Terry Francona, the guy who has been at the helm for six years now, says we have enough fire power to win this thing. I think we can trust him at this stage of the game. If that isn’t the case, however, Epstein is committed to going out and getting a big bat by mid year. So, this is the team we’re going to field, unless somebody comes out of the woodwork early in the season and makes an offer we can’t refuse. Let’s just get behind them and ride this train into October. I think it’s going to be a hell of a good time!

Okay. I need some help with this one. Today I was driving up in New Hampshire, and I found myself behind a truck with the one sticker that really sets me off. It’s pictured here and the one on the back of this particular truck read “Git ‘r Drunk.”  I looked into the cab of the truck and immediately hoped that this was not the way this clown was going to get any girl into the truck with him. However, there are always exceptions to the rule.

They say ignorance is bliss, and it truly is in this case. Guys who brandish this decal on their trucks are about as forward thinking as the bimbos who go to work at Hooters. If, in fact, women think that working at Hooters is reflective of  “women’s liberation,” they have their heads jammed firmly up their rectums. I’m here to tell you that they have set all women back by several decades. It’s hard to demand respect from men when women are filling the very role men have traditionally carved out for them.

Here’s what I’m thinking: We’re always hearing about these FEMA camps that have been built all across the United States. The right-wing paranoia squads are absolutely convinced that we’re all going to be rounded up and incarcerated there. I suggest a better use for these camps. Let’s round up all the clowns that brandish these stupid, sexist female silhouette decals and put them in the camps. Then, we can give them all some kind of massive sensitivity training. After that, we can round up all the women who waitresses at Hooters (and related jobs) and give them electroshock therapy.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about and, seriously, WTF?

People who know me always make the comment that I’ve been “gay from the womb.” They’re right. I have been. I can’t ever remember a time when my sexual orientation was different than it is now. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether being gay is about sexual preference or sexual orientation. I’m a firm believer that it’s about orientation and just about everyone else is on board with that. In fact, in 1986, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM.

So, when a few people asked how I knew that early on, I decided to write this. The answer is that I didn’t know that I was gay from that early on. What I did know is that I was different, but I didn’t have a name for it. Let’s face it, we’re talking the very early sixties when I had my first experience. Nobody was really talking about it then and, if you were doing it, you were doing it in the closet. Contrary to popular belief, it was not a comfortable time to be gay. That was one of the things I find surprising about the sixties. In spite of the incredible openness of the time, being gay was risky. It was the decade of free love as long as it was heterosexual love. Finally, keep in mind that all of my experiences happened in the context of going to Catholic school. I did that right up through college.

My first experience was just like what other kids were doing: Playing “doctor.” Except my girlfriends were doing it with boys. Not me! Wasn’t the least bit interested in the male anatomy. Literally couldn’t be bothered. Boys were for playing hockey and baseball with. I’m still pretty much in that zone at the age of fifty-five. Nothing has changed. When it comes to men, my friends call me the “oldest living virgin.” Never the twain shall meet. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.

Of course, there are plenty of people who just don’t “get it.” I’ve been asked countless times how I know I don’t like sex with men if I’ve never tried it. Listen, people, if it doesn’t interest you, there’s no point in trying it. That’s why I’m adamant about the fact that being gay is all about orientation, not try it and see.

Mmmmmm…something sure is different about me

The first time I had a feeling that I was different was as early as grammar school, and I’m thinking it had to be somewhere between the sixth and the eighth grades (or around the time we started going to dances). Most of my girlfriends were standing around looking at the boys. I, on the other hand, was standing around looking at the girls. However, it wasn’t that I didn’t hang out with boys. In fact, I had a blast with the boys…playing street hockey and baseball. My best friend was a boy. His name was Greg, and we had the best time together, but there was nada in the way of physical attraction. Of course, back then, what I didn’t realize was that we were both gay. As we got older, this turned into a great advantage because our families thought we were going out together. It certainly kept the heat off.

By high school, it was apparent that I was far from being like everyone else. The good thing was that I wasn’t alone anymore. There were five or six of us at Arlington Catholic who knew, by that time, that we were gay. That didn’t make it any easier to be gay, however. We were definitely singled out for ridicule by the other students. It was tough going initially. We eventually went from ridicule to novelty and life became easier. We all went to the prom together, with dates (albeit other gay people). The guy I went with was a riot. We had a blast at the prom, and the next day we all headed down to P-Town for the day, while the rest of our classmates went to Hyannis.

During my senior year, I also had my first fairly serious relationship. I’ve written about this already on this blog. It was with Linda, a girl who had been my constant companion since grammar school. I remember we started writing love letters to each other. For some reason my mother became suspicious of us, and began to go through my bureau drawers in search of evidence. She found it and proceeded to freak out. However, I had already learned that all you had to do was tell my mother what she wanted to hear and things would calm down. I did just that, and the freak out passed. The relationship lasted about a year (she was younger than me). By the time I moved on to Aquinas, it was over. She eventually married a guy named Mark and had five children.

That would not, however, be my fate.

The lesbian playground

I moved on to Aquinas Junior College in Newton. It may well have been a Catholic school, but it was a hotbed of lesbian relationships…my own included. I had a great group of friends and I would become involved intimately with two of them, one casual and one fairly serious. The casual relationship is indicative of the way some people thought back then. With Karen, you could kiss, but never go any further. It was almost as though that kept her from admitting she was a lesbian. There’s no question that it was tough coming out.

My relationship with Mary was much more serious. The reality was that I was also attracted to her younger sister, Barbara, but she turned out to be just a good friend. Mary and I moved in together after graduation, living in an apartment building owned by my brother-in-law and his family. She worked at Tufts Medical Center in Boston as a medical secretary and I worked at Millipore Corporation as a secretary to the promotion department.

While we were not closeted with our friends, we were definitely closeted with our families. She came from a strong Irish Catholic background and I came from an Italian Catholic background. There was no way we could comfortably come out of the closet at the age of twenty-one. The pressure to marry was incredible, but I had the courage of my convictions and my family eventually backed off. Not hers. Her uncle was a Catholic priest and really put the pressure on her. The relationship was doomed after that. As fate would have it, her uncle would turn out to be one of the most prolific pedophile priests ever seen in the Archdiocese of Boston. The Catholic church would eventually end up settling more than seventeen separate allegations. If that isn’t a case of the pot calling the kettle black, nothing is. I walked away from the Catholic church for good after that experience.

After my relationship with Mary ended, I moved back home for a while. However, the whole experience of having nearly been outed to my family by a pedophile priest only galvanized my desire to live my life the way I was meant to live it. I couldn’t do that while living at home. That’s when I moved to Melrose and my life as a lesbian really took off.

Comfortable with who I am

I think that I’ve been comfortable as a lesbian for many years, but it wasn’t always so. Anyone who tells you that they do not — at one time or another — long to be like everyone else is a liar. I went through that for a short period of time after my relationship with Mary. It just seemed too hard to be who I was. During my two years at Aquinas, I had lost contact with Greg. After graduation, we renewed our friendship. He was out of the closet. I was out of the closet. The party had begun.

Within a year of breaking up with Mary, a year in which I questioned who and what I was…and what I wanted to be, a great weight was finally lifted off my shoulders. It was Greg’s friendship that helped me get to that point in my life. I’ve been there ever since.

I came out because, once you do that, everything gets easier. That’s not to say you don’t lose some people along the way. I did. However, I determined that if my sexual orientation was the breaking point of a friendship, it wasn’t really a friendship to begin with. What it did for me was remove the unknown fears that had been preying on my emotions. It allowed me to face reality and assess where my life was. While it hurt that some people turned their backs on me, it also took a huge weight off my shoulders. The older I got, the harder it became to pretend to be what I wasn’t.

I came out at Millipore as well. I decided to do that because I spent a considerable part of every day there. While several people had advised against doing that, I found few repercussions. In fact, I discovered that Millipore was a pretty progressive company back in the mid-to-late seventies. Again, I lost a couple of friends, but that was just about all the trouble I would have.

Speaking personally, I carry the LGBT flag proudly. None of us has anything to be ashamed of. If we’re ashamed of ourselves, then it gives everyone else permission to be ashamed of us. If we stay hidden, then they can keep us hidden. All we can do is speak our truth regardless of the repercussions because, at the end of the day, all we have left is our integrity. I am out everywhere now, at work, at home, with all my friends and foes. Doesn’t matter. My attitude now is, if you’ve got a problem with who I am, it’s your problem.

There’s no doubt that I had a fair amount of European business travel during the eighties. I went to Paris a few times, and on one memorable trip to Paris I decided to take a week’s vacation and fly across to London. I had been to Paris and Strasbourg quite a few times and had seen a lot of France. Not only had I seen Paris, but I had also seen a lot of the outskirts. On this particular trip, we had gone to dinner at the European promotion manager’s house and met his wife. Then, he took us on a tour of the French countryside. We drove around to all these little villages, stopped in bars and tiny little restaurants and tried different wines and beers (normally I’m not a beer drinker). I was trashed by the end of the night. Originally, Miss Headcase and her mother wanted to meet me in Paris, but I had always wanted to see the UK. I’d had enough of Paris. I won.

Deep inside, I knew I shouldn’t have left the London hotel reservations to Miss Headcase. I don’t know what I’d been thinking. When the taxi pulled up in front of what she’d chosen, I just looked at her. “What the fuck is this?” Her mother chimed in by asking if she was out of her mind. We went inside. There wasn’t even a private bathroom in this place. It was shared and it was filthy. I told Miss Headcase that there wasn’t a chance in hell we were staying there for even one night. We ended up staying in a little place in Earl’s Court, a funky section of London with a lot of little Indian and Italian restaurants, and a ton of Australian tourists. It was fun. Better still, the food in the area was good. In fact, aside from eating at the pubs, I’d recommend you not eat at British restaurants. These people simply cannot cook.

Prior to leaving Paris, I got some sage advice from my European counterpart, Dieter. He said in his German accent, “Whatever you do, don’t order beef. It’s like eating shoe leather by the time they’re done with it.” I took his advice.

After settling in, the first thing I wanted to do was visit the original Hard Rock Cafe in London. The Hard Rock may be no big deal now, but back then it was huge. We waited nearly 45 minutes to get in during a cold October rain. The great thing about the Hard Rock in London is that they actually have umbrellas chained to the fence so that you don’t get wet while you’re waiting to get in. I’ve been to the Hard Rock in Paris, but it pales in comparison to the UK location. It’s like a musical museum. When I was young, I was really into the British music scene, mostly because of my obsession with The Beatles. Don’t get crazy…not Gerry & The Pacemakers or the Dave Clark Five. It was The Stones, The Who, The Kinks and Cream…that collection of British rockers.

Admittedly, I was leery about the food inside, but I worried for nothing. It was basically pub food, and pub food is the one thing you can count on in the UK. The best thing about it was the stuff they had from The Beatles.  It was totally impressive. This is where I got my black leather Hard Rock jacket, courtesy of Miss Headcase’s mother. In spite of my issues with Miss Headcase, I always got along with her mom. She bought it for me as an early birthday present.  The leather jackets at the Hard Rock today are all motorcycle style. Not my favorite. Mine is the old bomber style. Love it. I still wear it, worn though it is.

The royal whatnot

The next day, the weather cleared. That almost never happens in London in October. In fact, the rest of the week was clear and the temp hung around the high sixties. We decided to go to Buckingham Palace. Now, I’m not big on British royalty. Why are they royal? Because they’re rich? Some of these people have been the biggest assholes in history. But I have to tell you that Buckingham Palace is amazing, and the changing of the guard is something to see (if for nothing else to see how damned constipated these guards truly are).

You’ve got to work real hard at it but, if you make a big enough fool of yourself, you can actually get these guys to laugh. I did, but I had to put myself in the idiot zone to accomplish this feat. People who know me absolutely know I’m not afraid to go to the idiot zone for a laugh. I figured I’d never see these people again in my freakin’ life, so why not make a fool of myself.

After Buckingham Palace came Piccadilly Circus, which is almost like Times Square (only a hell of a lot better, frankly). It brings together five of the busiest streets in London and is dominated by neon signs, an amazing thing to see at night if you like that Vegas feel. (Personally, I’m not a Vegas fan. Been there on business, but that’s a different post for a different day.) If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a big music fan. The first Virgin Record store I ever went to was in Piccadilly and it was absolutely huge. I got lost in that place for hours.

Funny thing about the statue in the middle of Piccadilly. It seemed to me a wierd place to put a statue of Cupid. That’s what I thought it was. So, I decided to research it a bit while I was there. Apparently, the statue is often identified as Eros because it looks like Cupid (known as the God of Sensual Love). What I found out  is that it was intended to be his twin, Anteros, the God of Selfless Love. It was created as a tribute to the philanthropic efforts of the 7th Earl of Shaftsbury. I love figuring out this stuff and I thought this story was pretty wild.

Next stop, Carnaby Street

Being as enamored of the whole ‘Sixties’ thing as I am, I had to pay a visit to Carnaby Street in the Soho district. This was the place to be in the Sixties, the fashion and music center. Not only did designers like Mary Quant hang out there, but so did The Beatles, The Small Faces, The Who and The Stones. They played at the Marquee Club, then just hung out and socialized or went shopping on Carnaby.

I’m not that big into fashion and never really have been. I guess the U.S. equivalent of Carnaby would be Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, which had a feel I like much better. It wasn’t so glitzy and trendy. It was more counterculture…less “mod” and more “hippie.” Still, Carnaby was interesting to see and, as it turns out, although completely unplanned I visited during their sixties celebration.

Greenwich Mean Time and British food

One of the more mundane trips we made (and I can’t even remember actually where this is kept) was to see the clock by which all others are set in the world. You know, it’s the whole Greenwich Mean Time thing. There wasn’t much to see there, with the possible exception of the observatory. However, eating in this little slice of heaven provided the best example of why you should never eat anything prepared by the British.

They had these little mini apple pies at one restaurant we went to. It is rare that I eat apple pie (or any kind of pie for that matter), but it just so happens that this pie was supposed to be the restaurant’s calling card. I decided to try it. They put it down in front of me piping hot and it smelled great. Really. Then, just as I was about to dig in, the waiter leaned over me and poured this disgusting hot vanilla pudding over the top of the pie. So much for that idea. Never, my friends, eat British cooking. I don’t care how desperate you are.

Coming home

Generally speaking, there’s always some kind of excitement around me and airports. At the time we took this trip, there had been some kind of terrorist attack against a U.S. property somewhere in the Middle East. I can’t remember exactly where it was or what it was. That meant that flying was tricky.

Miss Headcase’s mom was a real estate agent. She was really good at it. I’ve always said she could probably sell shit to a fly for a profit. She had a great personality, which is one of the reasons she and I remained friends until her untimely death. On this trip, she had decided to buy silver bars. Somehow, she left one in one of the carry on bags I was holding. When we got to the scanner, it immediately registered on the screen and the bonehead observing the inside of the bag assumed it was a bomb. Need I say more?

WTF?

My dad died when I was nine, so my memories of my dad are not as voluminous as they are of my mom. Yet, in spite of the fact that he’s been dead forty-six years, the memories I do have are pretty vivid. My memories are almost like short little films. What I wish I had are photos, but I don’t right now. I know my sister Mamie has photos of my dad, particularly from her wedding. He gave her away at her wedding on October 14, 1962. By August 8, 1963 he was dead. Over the next few weeks, I’ll borrow some photos of my dad, scan them, and add them to Mi Famiglia and to this post.

When I was little, people would say that I was the “spitting  image” of my dad, and I was. He was a very mild mannered guy, though. I don’t consider myself mild mannered. I think my personality is much more like my mom’s. As I’ve gotten older, I think I look a bit more like my mom as well.

I used to go food shopping with my dad all the time. Since he and my mom never had their drivers licenses, he and I used to walk to the end of the street to Broadway (in Revere) and go to the Stop & Shop. I remember that it was right behind the fire station. We’d buy our food and then we’d carry all these bags  back up the street. Sometimes we’d get on the bus and go to McKinnon’s in ‘Everett. He used to say that they had fresher fish and meat. He’d also buy Eight O’Clock coffee and have it ground right at the cash register. I used to love the smell of coffee even as a kid.

Not having a car never held my dad back. I used to love the beach so much when I was small. My dad and I would take the bus to Revere Beach together. It was nothing like it is today. It was amazing. I remember the Cyclone Roller Coaster (it was awesome) and The Wild Mouse. I also remember the Hippodrome where they had the Bumper Cars (we called them the Dodge’ems) and the Flying Horses. But we didn’t spend a lot of time there because all I wanted to do was be in the ocean. I remember that the waves used to be so big back then. They’d come in and my dad would pick me up by my arms and swing me back and forth. Then, when the wave got close he’d let me go and I’d go right through it. I could do that for hours. My dad was great. He’d do whatever I wanted. If I wanted to build a giant sand castle, he’d be right there building it with  me. Then he’d take me to Kelly’s Roast Beef. When I was a kid, I was too dumb to appreciate the clams. I used to just get a roast beef sandwich. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned how awesome the clams are there, even today (I’m talking about the Revere Beach location only; the other Kelly’s restaurants are pretty mediocre, I think).

Today at work we were talking about when we were kids and the things our dads used to let us watch on TV. My boss was telling me that her mother was mortified that her dad used to let her watch Benny Hill, a really unbelievably funny British comedy. When I was young, people were disgusted by the Three Stooges. I used to love the Three Stooges (still do; I’ve downloaded every single episode). “Violent is the Word for Curly” is my favorite episode. It’s the one where this all-girl’s school mistakes the stooges for three professors, and they end up singing the song “Swinging the Alphabet.” I remember that the big topic of conversation in my neighborhood was that the kid down the street had whacked his father off the head with a hammer after watching the Three Stooges.

Apparently, however, Superman had a more profound impression on me than the Three Stooges. We lived on the third floor of an apartment building at 218 Beach Street in Revere and all of the tenants had back porches. One year I got a Superman costume for Halloween, and I was playing on the back porch. My dad grabbed me by the cape and probably saved my life just as I was about to jump off the third story porch.

On Sundays my dad and I used to go to Woodlawn Cemetary in Everett, believe it or not. ‘We’d be at my grandmother’s anyway, and it was just down the street. It’s beautiful there. The flowers were beautiful and there were plenty of benches to sit on. We’d walk through and then just spend time talking about stuff. He also took me there to teach me how to ride my bike. Like almost every other cemetary, Woodlawn had an “old” and a “new” section. Some of the stuff in the old section, like statues of angels,  was amazing (and kind of scary to a kid).

My dad was an amazingly patient man. One of the things I absolutely have a phobia about is vomiting. I’m not kidding you. I consider it one of the most disgusting human events on the planet. Once when I was little, I must have caught a stomach virus at school. Unfortunately for my dad, it was on a night when we had pizza and chocolate covered marshmallows for dessert (a truly disgusting combination). I remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling really sick. My mom and dad let me get in the middle of the bed between them. That was their first mistake because that was the first place I yakked. I figured if I didn’t go into the bathroom, I wouldn’t get sick. Talk about twisted fucking logic, man. A few hours later, I was at it again. This time, my dad made sure I got out of the bed. The situation remained the same, however. I refused to go into the bathroom, and proceeded to throw up right on his foot in the middle of the living room. It was pathetic, but he remained calm and cool, and extremely comforting in spite of my absurd phobia.

The unthinkable happens

When my dad was 52 (and I was 9), he got sick. It was first diagnosed as arthritis in my dad’s back. Nobody could really figure out what it was. It just never occurred to me that my dad was ever going to die. I remember they sent my dad to a gym to work with a guy named Mayo Kahn (who, as it turns out, was the actual model for Superman), but the pain kept getting worse. He was eventually diagnosed with lung cancer. By then it was pretty advanced, I’m told.

In 1963, there was no chemotherapy. There was only radiation. He suffered in the Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett for three solid months. Still, I never dreamed he wouldn’t be coming home. They wouldn’t let me in to see my dad in the hospital because they said I was too young. I remember my sister’s husband, Skip, sneaked me ino the Whidden one Sunday. I’m sure he didn’t look anything like what I remembered, but it didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to be with him.

One day, the phone rang at home and I picked it up. It was the doctor. I was pretty naive at 9 years old and I remember being happy, thinking it meant my dad was coming home. I gave the phone to my mom, and she left me with my grandmother and rushed to the hospital. Many hours later, my mom and sisters returned home without my dad. He had finally died. There would be no more suffering. It took a long time for that to sink in. When everyone had gone home after that long day, I remember being alone in my room crying myself to sleep. That was the first time in my life I had come face-to-face with death. There have been many times since then, but none have had that kind of effect on me (with the possible exception of my mother’s death many years later).

Writer’s Note: My sister Mamie was in labor in the Whidden Hospital while my dad was dying there. My dad died August 8, 1963. My niece, Maria Julia (after my dad), was born August 11, 1963 in the same hospital.

Yeah, before she was a Della Piana, she was a Catanzano. That was my mom. She was born in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 26, 1910, and she was one of ten children (two of them died as babies). My mom passed away in Medford, Massachusetts on February 19, 1992 from the ravaging effects of colon and liver cancer. In the 82-plus years she spent on this earth, she left her mark on all of us. Even today, people remember her and tell me that she was something else. She was. She was always her own person, that’s for sure. I prefer to call her a piece of work. My sisters and I have joked for many years that my dad had to be a saint. We were convinced that she wore the pants in the family, but we also were very clear that my dad adored my mom. I am eternally thankful that I had her in my life for 37 years.

Although she was a graduate of Burdett’s Business School and worked at J.L. Hammett Company (yes, the oldest school supply business), my mother was a stay-at-home mom the bulk of her life. That changed on August 8, 1963 when my dad died of cancer at the age of 52. It was a shock to us. He was originally treated for arthritis before they found out he had lung cancer. He was gone in three months. She was up that hospital every single day and night with him until he passed away. My mother had to go back to work after that. She worked at a donut shop across the street from my house so she could keep an eye on me. I had my own house key at nine so I could let myself in while my older sisters were at school.

My mother was a tough woman. She was the first woman in Everett to wear slacks. Somewhere at my sister Mamie’s house there’s a photo of her walking down the steps of some building in Everett in a pair of pants. She pulled us all through after my dad died, even though she and I were forced to live with relatives after my sisters were married. First, we lived with my Uncle Tony and his family (including 14 children) in Medford for a while. That was a blast, actually. I was really close to my cousins. After that, we moved into an apartment with nasty Auntie Buddy for many years. That eventually came to an end because she was intolerable to live with. Once I was old enough to move into an apartment, my mom moved in with my sister Mamie, her husband Skip and their three children. She lived there for 18 years.

“Mrs. Della Piana, DSS calling…”

I think I was a shock to my mother’s system. I really do have a pushing-the-envelope mentality. I’ve been like that since I was a kid. She really didn’t know how to handle me. I pulled some really unbelievable stuff, like telling her I had tonsillitis and taking 23 consecutive days off from school. The incredible thing was she listened to me for so long. What mother lets her kid take 23 days off without checking the situation out with a pediatrician? When she finally did that, he proceeded to tell her that I was basically full of shit. After that, all hell broke loose. She was absolutely pissed, chasing me around the house with a broom.When I tried to hide under the table, she turned the thing around and started poking me with the broom stick.  She was determined to make me pay, I’m convinced.

And then there’s the little matter of my Aunt Buddy’s car. The three of us were living on Riverside Avenue in Medford at the time and my aunt had a 1964 Chevy Nova. When the two of them left for work, I’d take the spare keys and drive that mother around the block. I had to be about maybe 12 or 13 years old at the time. I was sitting pretty until one of my nosy neighbors walked over to the house and told my mom I was driving the car. I got whacked with a frying pan for that one, but she never told Auntie Buddy about that little incident.

She also hated peach fuzz. Drove her nuts. We had this telephone table my mom would sit at when she talked on the phone. I’d wait until she’d be in the middle of a conversation, then I’d grab a peach from the refrigerator and rub it down her arm. She’d immediately throw the phone in the air and yell, “You little bastard!” Then, she’d chase me around the house, forgetting completely about the person on the other end of the line. It was like waving a red cape at a bull.

One of the funniest things that ever happened took place on a bus at Wellington Circle in Medford. My mother and I were taking the bus to see my grandmother in Everett, and we went by this shopping center with a Dunkin’ Donuts. I remember pointing to it and yelling, “Ma look! It’s Fuckin’ Donuts.” I had spent the previous night at my Uncle Salvy’s house with my cousin, and she just knew he told me that’s what it said. She knew because he was trouble with a capital T. She gave me the dirtiest look on the planet and said, “I’m going to kill him when I see him.” As soon as that happened and everybody on the bus was laughing, my mother decided we were getting off and waiting for a new bus. She practically pulled me off by my ear. She was determined that I was never going to say that word again. (She lost that battle, by the way.)

Pinching. That was another weapon. It was brutal, but effective.

My sisters and I are pretty much convinced that, if she were alive and parenting today, DSS would be at our house…a lot. In fact, they’d probably just move in with us.

Devoted to her family

My mother didn’t see eye to eye with her sibilings about many things. She had great differences of opinion with my Aunt Buddy. When we lived with her, my mother felt that she was too hard on me…expected too much from a child. That was one of the reasons why she decided it would be best if just she and I lived together. In spite of that, my mother never allowed the rift to become a lifelong rift. She remained close to my Aunt Buddy. They did many things together. She also had a testy relationship with my Aunt Muff. (Really, don’t ask me how she got that name. Her real name was Florence.) Yet, my mother made sure that we remained respectful over the years and, when my aunt had problems or troubles, my mother was there.

My Uncle Joe was the baby of the family, an unpredictable schizophrenic for many years. My mother and her sisters, even as they grew old, saw him three times a week. They cooked for him. They cleaned his house. They interceded for him with the Veterans Administration. They made sure he got the care he needed.

The one thing my grandmother did was instill a deep sense of family in all of her children. My mother did the same with us.

Losing our best friend

My mom had been sick for a while. The doctor had first diagnosed her with a spastic colon, whatever the hell that was. There were other diagnoses as well. I’m not sure what the final test was that they ran, but I suspect it was a colonoscopy. To this day, I don’t have any idea why they took so long to run it. I remember getting the call from my sister JoAnne. They had found a tumor in her colon and, by the time they detected it, it had its own blood supply. That’s never good. Never.

My mom agreed to surgery, but made it clear she was doing it for us and that there would be no chemo at 82 years old. We understood that perfectly. My mother had been a smoker for most of her life and had emphysema for many years by the time her surgery was required. The surgeon, Dr. Frederick Ackerman, decided to put the surgery off for a month in order to strengthen her lungs. During that time, she visited a pulmonologist at Mass General Hospital. The decision was made to do the surgery, then immediately put her into the ICU on a vent until she was strong enough to breathe on her own.

We were all there that day, just hanging out in the waiting room for what seemed to be endless hours. We were joking about her and I remember saying, “I wonder what kind of shit she’s giving those doctors.” Everybody laughed. Finally, Dr. Ackerman came down and said that the surgery was successful. He had to remove some lymph nodes, but she was “clean” of cancer.  My mom remained in the hospital for quite some time.

One Sunday, I went up to visit her in the White Building at MGH and my sisters were already there. I walked toward her room and saw a bunch of doctors and attendants working on her. I remember that one of my sisters grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back. “Don’t go in there.” I can’t remember if it was Mamie or JoAnne. Her lungs had filled with fluid and she couldn’t breathe. That was a scary moment. It’s funny that all these years later that’s one of the visions that remain clear in my head.

My mom came home and she was in her usual good spirits for many months. Life went back to its routine. Then, one day my sister called me at work. We were talking about stuff and then she mentioned that my mother seemed a little weak. She could tell by her voice. We didn’t know what was going on, but I told her that maybe she was just overtired. That was being optimistic.

A couple of nights later, they had to rush her to the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. They said she had pneumonia, but there was surely something else at work. They ran some tests and determined that she needed more tests. Her primary care doctor called us and told us that they found some spots in her liver. The CT scan came next. The determination was that she had liver cancer. The doctor believed it had been there all along, but it had been so small that it couldn’t be detected. It was just a matter of time now.

We had the inevitable conversation about what she wanted. The one thing she didn’t want was to be revived. I remember we got the paperwork from the hospital, and my sister carried it around with her for at least a week before we could summon the courage to sign it. At the end of the day, it was what my mother wanted that counted. She told us that she had spent more than thirty years without my dad and that she was confident she’d done her best for us. It was time to let go. We signed.

My sisters and I spent the night of my 37th birthday at the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. My mom wanted them to bring a cake to celebrate, so they did. She had grown close to one of her nurses, Lisa, and she came as well. Lisa told us that she loved my mother’s sarcastic sense of humor. (Funny thing was that Lisa and I saw each other for about three months after my mom died. I suspect it was that connection.) Later in the night my mom fell asleep. That’s when I decided to blow up the blue latex gloves — about 20 of them — and tape them to her bed.

My oldest sister, Mamie, walked into the room with Lisa and said, “You know she’s going to kill you when she wakes up.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll blame you, Mamie. You’re the one that told me it’s important that we don’t treat her any differently than we normally would. I’m just being myself.”

The long goodbye

A few days later, we brought my mom home to die in Medford where she had spent the last 18 years of her life. This was so hard for me to watch. I felt so guilty because I had to walk out of the room so often. My sister Mamie told me that I didn’t have to be a rock all the time, but I have to tell you that she definitely was. Everyone was there all the time, trying to spend every moment possible with her that was left — my Aunt Buddy, her grandchildren, her daughters. It was painful.

She was a proud woman. It was hard to watch my brother-in-law lift her up like a baby and put her on the commode in her room. She had suffered from emphysema for years, refusing an oxygen tank and staying tough. Looking at that shit tore me apart. It was hard giving her morphine. All of it was painful from day one until the very end. I felt guilty thinking that I just wanted it to be over, but I wanted it to be over for her sake. I knew she was hating being dependent and helpless.She had said one thing to me when she came home. She told me she wasn’t afraid to die. She was afraid to suffer. I promised that we would not allow her to suffer.

I was at work one day when my sister called to tell me that my mom was having last rites later that morning. I cancelled all my meetings and left the office, arriving just before Father Gallagher showed up. We were all there in her room. At the end of the process, my mother looked at Father Gallagher and said, “Not bad for an Irish guy.”

Everyone started laughing and he said, “You know, Frances, I wouldn’t expect any other comment from you.”

It was a little bit of levity in an otherwise sad situation, but we all knew the end was near.

Several days later, I was once again at work when my sister called. She was crying. She had been sitting with my mother and talking to her. My mom made her promise that the three of us would stick together no matter what. Mamie promised on behalf of JoAnne and I. She also told my mother that it was okay for her to go. My mother, apparently, was particularly worried about me. It was probably because I was still seen as the “baby” of the family, even at 37. My sister Mamie promised that she and JoAnne would take care of me. At some point, my sister — totally exhausted from the ordeal — fell asleep at the bottom of my mom’s bed. When she woke up, my mother was gone.

I rushed to Medford as fast as I could. I had to have broken the land speed record. I arrived just as the funeral home was unzipping the body bag. That was a horrible experience. I asked them to wait. I wanted to say goodbye alone in her room. I remember closing the door and sitting on her bed, apologizing for not being there in the end. I really hated myself for that for a long time. Then I forced myself to watch as they packed her into the body bag and took her away.

As if this all wasn’t enough pain for her children to bear, my Aunt Muff weighed in with her own brand of lunacy, accusing my older sister Mamie of not doing enough to save my mom’s life. My sister had been the primary caregiver at the end of my mom’s life and, no matter what differences I had with her, she didn’t deserve that. I remember calling my Aunt and telling her to shut her mouth. (I believe it was actually “Shut your fucking mouth.”) My mother had made the decision to go no further. She did not want to be rushed to the hospital one more time. I’m not sure that anyone even knows that I called my aunt, but that’s the very last time I spoke to her even though she lived to be in her nineties. That was the end for me.

The final march

My mom was buried out of Gately Funeral Home in Melrose, right down the street from where I was living. When I arrived for the first night of the wake, I couldn’t believe that the line to get in stretched out the door and all the way down the street. It was like that for two nights. I had been working at Millipore for 18 years, and the place was packed with Millipore people, even those I had considered to be adversaries…people I went toe-to-toe with every day. I remember commenting about this to my boss and she told me to consider it a sign of how much respect I had gained in the Company. Funny, some of those people came to the wake both evenings and also to the funeral.

Kneeling in front of that coffin on the day of the funeral was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I knew it was the last time I’d see my mom. They’d close the top and it would be over. I could barely keep myself together. I remember getting up and turning around and seeing Lisa at the back of the room, quietly sitting there. That was a great help to me. The other thing that helped was that everyone had such funny stories about my mother, especially my cousin Richie. He had us rolling in the aisles with his stories. She used to pull him by the ears too.

But, undoubtedly, one of the funniest stories was told by my sister JoAnne and my sister Mamie’s husband, Skip. JoAnne was at Nahant Beach with her friends, and my mother didn’t like the sound of that. She gave Skip and Mamie a flashlight and told them to go check on her. Nobody argued with my mother. He got there and his lights were disturbing everybody at the beach that night. He said to my sister, “Your mother is going to get me killed.” They eventually did find her with her friends, and reported to my mother that she was okay. JoAnne arrived home later and, when she put her bag down, a bottle of wine rolled out. She convinced my mother that she was holding it for a friend. My mother bought it. It was almost as easy as the tonsillitis lie.

It was freezing the day of the funeral. I remember that much, although some other stuff is a blur. The last clear vision I have is watching her coffin being lowered into the ground, joining my dad. My sister Mamie then said the funniest thing I heard through this whole ordeal,  “Watch out, dad,” she said, “here she comes.”

Okay, haven’t written much on this, but I’ve had a hopeless Red Sox affliction since the Cardiac Kids (that would be 1967; I was thirteen). That ‘67 team was awesome; they pulled it out of the fire so many times it was unbelievable. The ‘86 team was pretty good too. It broke my heart when they lost to the Mets. I’ve lived through all the bad owners. I watched T0ny Conigliaro’s career-ending injury. I thought Dan Duquette was a putz. Then, along came Theo Epstein. I live by the Gospel According to Theo. I don’t question the man’s moves very much.

That’s why I believe that the Red Sox are ready for the post season. Epstein just goes quietly about his business of building a team. He may start the year convinced he’s got the right mix, and find out some of the pieces don’t fit the way he intended them to. If that’s the case, he makes the personnel moves he has to without mortgaging the farm. This year, he added V-Mart (Victor Martinez), Casey Kotchman and Alex Gonzales, giving up very little in the process. As a result, the Sox are firing on all eight cylinders at the optimal time.

Now, I’m writing this because I had some chump bring up the Manny Ramirez vs. Jason Bay issue. His premise was that the Sox would be better off with Manny. Yeah, sure. Let’s just pretend Manny didn’t slug an elderly member of the Red Sox staff because he got pissed off over tickets. We’ll just ignore that character issue because he can hit. Manny is garbage in a uniform. No question about it. The “Manny being Manny” crap got old fast this year, but I don’t get the big love affair with this guy to begin with. He’s a great hitter. That’s it. He’s a one dimensional player. He doesn’t bust his butt in the outfield. He’s mediocre at best and that’s because he’s freakin’ lazy. He also doesn’t think it’s necessary to run out ground balls.

Let’s look at Ramirez vs. Bay by the 2009 numbers:

Jason Bay: 34 homers, 107 RBI with 27 doubles and 3 triples

Manny Ramirez: 19 homers, 59 RBI with 22 doubles and 2 triples

Okay, yeah, Manny was suspended for 50 games for using a woman’s fertility drug (considered a performance-enhancing substance). He must have been trying to get in touch with his feminine side. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that kept Manny’s stats low.  Again, this whole episode goes right to character. Manny hasn’t got any.

Unlike Manny, we have photographic proof that Jason Bay is the complete package: He hits, he actually runs and he can play left field. I don’t see how people can make the argument for Manny. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. In the meantime,  the Sox should be intent on signing Jason Bay to a long-term contract.

Postscript: Oh, yeah, Jason Bay celebrated his 31st birthday today by whacking a home run and single today, driving in 3 runs.

I’ve often told people there are only two places I could live other than Boston. One is Washington, D.C. The other is San Francisco. I took one great business trip out to San Francisco during the late nineties (could have been 2000, not sure). I know the photo I’m using here in the intro is one of those typical San Francisco photos that you see everywhere. But I have to tell you that there is nothing quite like driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning hours. Instead of staying in a hotel during this trip, I stayed in a condo in Tiburon. Millipore had just purchased a life science instrumentation company (don’t ask me the name; I don’t remember) and I was tapped to work on the new literature and communications plan. I had been friends with Linda, who was the Director of Marketing, so I stayed with her. It was so much better than a hotel. On the way into the city, I had a great view of Muir Woods, and the fog over the bridge as the sun rose was just unbelievable.

I remember that the meetings I was involved in were really irritating, although I can’t remember all the details. But I do know that I had one sweet time in San Francisco. One of Millipore’s best graphic designers, Lisa, had fallen in love with an engineer named Bill. They had moved out to San Jose together and were living in an artist’s loft. She was the first person I contacted when I learned I’d be making the trip. I decided to get there on a Friday, before the weekend. It worked out well because Linda and Lisa also knew each other, and it gave them a chance to see each other again. I had rented a car, so we met near The Presidio and just hung out watching the old Italian guys playing Bocci. Then we all had lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf (and pretty much managed to get trashed in spite of the fact that we were eating).

On Sunday, Lisa and I planned to hook up again. I drove out to her place in San Jose. Not only was she a designer, but a painter. The whole top part of the loft was just filled with huge half-done canvases. I remember thinking this would be the perfect outlet for me; that one of the things I came close to doing when I returned to Boston was give up my apartment and get myself an artists loft somewhere in Cambridge. It never happened, but it was tempting. After we hung out for a while, she said, “Come on. Let’s go. We’re taking Bill’s car today.”

I remember thinking that I couldn’t figure out why, but I was about to find out soon enough. First, we took a trip down Lombard Street, or the Crooked Street, whatever you want to call it. That was interesting enough. But then, Lisa drove to the top of this incredible hill that just had dips in the road all the way down. “Ready?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I knew instantly what she was going to do.

“We’re taking a risk here,” she said, “but I haven’t been caught by the cops once yet.”

“Yeah,” I said, “with our track record, Lisa, today could be your lucky day!”

She started laughing and just gunned Bill’s car. We must have gone bouncing down that hill at about fifty miles an hour, bottoming out his car like there was no consequence.  Apparently she did this with everyone who came out to visit and, clearly, Bill didn’t mind.  More testament to the fact that love makes you stupid.

We were hanging out at their loft later in the day and I mentioned that the one place I had to get to on this trip was The Castro. I had friends who had lived there before. I also had friends who lived in Provincetown, even though it’s positively desolate in the middle of a New England winter, and friends who summered on Fire Island.  The Castro, however, was the stuff legends were made of.

The gay comfort zone

The Castro is like no other gay mecca on the planet. I had left Lisa’s late that afternoon and decided to go right in by myself. After I broke up with Miss Headcase, I took a week long trip down to Provincetown by myself to clear my head. Going to The Castro alone was not a problem for me. It’s incredibly comfortable and everyone is incredibly “out.” It’s a great feeling. Is it a shame that there have to be places like this? Yes and no. Everyone in America should be able to feel comfortable with his or her sexual orientation and gender identity. Honestly, however, places like The Castro and Provincetown are also cultural meccas, and that’s an important thing for the LGBT community…just as the North End of Boston is a cultural mecca for the Italian community, and Southie is for the Irish. How cool is the Castro? My political favorite, Rachel Maddow, grew up there and went to Castro High. Harvey Milk, one of my heroes, was known as the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.

Anyway, I hung around the Castro most of the day checking the area out and I thought it would be absolutely amazing to live there. The one place I absolutely had to go to was Twin Peaks, undoubtedly one of the most famous gay bars ever. It was the first gay bar in the nation with fully open plate glass windows. No hiding. That’s what I liked most about it. It was like telling the world this is the way it is. If you’ve got a problem with it, it’s all yours. The people hanging there are a bit older (as is the staff) and, instead of the pulsating video bar music, it’s just a great place to sit and meet people, shoot the shit, and watch the rest of the world go by at the intersection of Castro and Market.

Ah, but all good things must come to an end. By about ten, I was headed back to Tiburon. I had meetings in the morning and certainly didn’t want a hangover.

One last highlight Yeah, the next three days were taken up by meetings and business dinners. Honest to freakin’ God, you have to wonder why how this company ever made money. Their ideas about how to spend their communications budget were absolutely absurd. Try this one on: They spent somewhere on the order of $30K to produce an ad — just production (writing, photography, films, etc). Then, they spent a mere $18K running the ad, which is a frequency of about three times. What was worse, they ran the ad one time in three different journals. What a colossal waste of money. Here’s the rule of thumb: If you can’t run the ad at least six times in one journal (but preferably 8-10), don’t bother running an ad at all. It’s like pissing in the wind.

They were really irritating me. I’d listen to them. Then, I’d say something unbelievably sarcastic. Then, Linda would reach over and pinch my leg. I don’t have much patience for stupidity, and I really have no patience for these marketing clowns who think they understand marketing communications just because they have marketing in their titles. And I know Linda knew I was right because she had her hand over her mouth and was laughing while she was pinching me.

On my final day there, I was free all day. There was one other place I absolutely had to visit, and that was Haight-Ashbury. Somewhere in my vast collection of sixties memorabilia were several posters from The Haight. This was another one of those places that stood out in my mind from the sixties. I wanted to see what it looked like thirty years later. There are still some places reminiscent of that flower-power,  acid-dropping, ganja-smoking era…places like Pipe Dreams and The Love of Ganesha. However, much has changed. A lot of the old shops have been replaced by high-end boutiques, Internet cafes, second-hand stores and trendy restaurants. I would much preferred to have visited thirty years ago.

I stuck around for an early dinner at a place called The Citrus Club. It was basically an Asian noodle shop, and I love that stuff: Simple food, reasonable prices. It reminded me of a place I used to love to go to in Harvard Square called Ma Soba. When Thalia was really little (still being carried around in a Kelty Pack), I used to take her there and she’d eat the hottest freakin’ noodles you could give her.

After this day of walking around, I was pretty wiped out and headed back to Tiburon. I was flying out the next day so that I could be home for the weekend. I felt like I had been gone for a long time.

At one point in our lives, Greg, Jack, Sam, John and I partied like there was no tomorrow in Vermont. But we didn’t just party anywhere. We were partying in luxury homes at Hawk Mountain. There were two sets of these homes back then, one in Pittsfield and one in Rochester. The majority of these places were owned by New York doctors and attorneys. The rent was steep back then, but we’d just pool our Friday pay checks and head up. It didn’t matter how many of us stayed in these places. They were huge. Hell, once we got up there, we didn’t care if we ever went out, particularly if it was snowing…and it often was. All we cared about was that we had enough money left over for booze and ganja. We did. There was a security deposit and we’d get that back. So, we’d just split that money and we’d have money for the following week.

I don’t know how many freakin’ trips we made up there. They kind of all run into each other in my mind, and for good reason. I’m lucky I can remember any of these trips. Forget the hooch. That was fine. Nobody ever died from that shit. The drinking, however, was crazy. I was lucky I didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.  It was always the five of us, and then there would be several other people who would come at different times. Hell, we met people at the general stores in Vermont who would end up partying with us. It was absurd. We didn’t even know these people. They could have been serial killers for all we knew.

How old were we? Well, one of us had to be at least twenty-one to rent and I was the oldest in the group by a couple of years. The homes were always rented in my name, so I was probably about twenty-three or twenty-four. I was working at Millipore at the time, but it was early in my career there (I started working there when I was twenty).

What were we drinking in those days? Name it. Rum. Jack Daniels. Tequila. Sometimes we drank all of them together. We were just whacked out back then. I remember one day we were waiting for a bunch of people to come up after work. It was a Friday, and we’d been up there from late morning. By the time the early evening arrived it was pouring outside. It was fall, because I was sick as a freakin’ dog and I was sitting outside in the pouring rain in the leaves feeling like death. Buddha only knows what I was drinking that day. I think it was probably Jack Daniels on the rocks.

It was freezing out, so the rest of the gang came out and got me to come inside. They put me in the bathroom because I told them I was sure what went down was going to come up. And that’s when the adventure began. They left, I was about to be sick and, instead of picking up the hopper, I just stuck my head in the toilet. That’s when it got stuck in there. It wasn’t really stuck. It was just that I had absolutely no motor control, and neither did any of them. So, they couldn’t get my head out once it was in. They kept flushing so that I wouldn’t drown…at least they thought I was going to drown. I probably wasn’t. Worst of all, as sick as I was, I was laughing my ass off and so were they. If there’s one advantage to all of us being gay, it was that there was no sweat when I took all my clothes off in front of them and got in the shower. Know what happened after that?

I got my second wind. The rest of the party goers arrived and I dressed in clean clothes, went upstairs and promptly resumed partying. I never even got sick. This particular party went on until about seven in the morning, when we all finally collapsed. We slept pretty much all day. We woke up sometime late in the afternoon to eat dinner and start partying all over again.

There are other unbelievably psycho scenes from this particular movie in my life. We managed somehow to pick up this guy who worked at a gas station across from the entrance to Hawk. His name, if you can believe it, was Silvertooth. Yeah, he had one, right smack in the front.  We met him at this local bar called the Roadhouse, and he was funny as hell. He fit right in. His only problem was that he just couldn’t get it into his head that lesbians didn’t sleep with guys. Don’t know what he was thinking, but he never managed to get what he was looking for. Too bad he wasn’t gay himself because every freakin’ guy there wanted to sleep with him. He was pretty good looking and  could have had an excellent time. Needless to say, Silvertooth became a fixture for a number of months, then he moved out of state. That was the end of that. Seems we had some other transient partiers that I can’t really remember.

Probably one of the most bizarre nights in Vermont happened for Greg and I at the same time. He ended up in the bedroom with a woman, and I ended up in a different bedroom with a guy. We all knew each other, but  neither of us have any idea how it happened. I can tell you that I was drunk. I can also tell you that dead drunk or dying absolutely nothing happened except I said to this guy, “Put that thing away. It isn’t happening now or ever.” Like I’ve said from day one, gay from the womb, baby, and lovin’ it. We both escaped the bedrooms at the same time and just sat on the living room floor laughing.

I’m not sure when the Vermont experience ended. I know it had to have gone on for at least a year. In that time, we probably made more than twenty trips up there. It was surely one of the most out-of-control times of our lives and, while I can’t remember much of it, I know for sure we had one hell of a ride.

Never let it be said that business travel isn’t sometimes adventurous. It is especially adventurous when you’re somewhat fearless and have no idea WTF you are doing or where you are going. That would sum up my trip to Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference. I’m not sure when this little event took place, late eighties maybe early nineties. The Pittsburgh Conference is an analytical instrumentation show. Prior to moving it to the McCormic Convention Center in Chicago every other year, it had always been held in New Orleans. At the time, I was the Marketing Services Manager for Millipore’s Analytical Division, and was attending the show to conduct a Press Breakfast and work the booth.

But first, we had to get there and that proved to be a challenge right from the get go. The guy who worked for me, Brian, and I left on a Saturday morning so that we could go to the convention center and supervise the booth assembly.  We only had forty feet of booth space, small for us in comparison to other shows, but it was a key market for both our HPLC sample prep filters and our lab water purification systems.

I know that we were flying right after some type of international terrorist event, so it was particularly touchy going through the gate. So, here we are standing in line and the woman in front of me sets off the alarms. I’m thinking. Okay, this will be simple. The problem was that she kept setting off the alarm. First, they had her remove all her jewelry, including her earrings. She still set off the alarm. Then, her belt. She still set off the alarm. Then, they asked her to remove her shoes. That’s when my alarm went off. Why?

Maybe because I had a quarter ounce of hooch in my shoe. I remember turning around to Brian, “Hey, I need to get the fuck out of this line.”

“Why?”

“Because I stuck the ganja in my shoe.”

“Yeah, in your sock, right?”

“No, in my shoe. I didn’t have time to put it in my sock.”

He was very comforting, “Oh, then you’re screwed.”

Yeah, thanks, Brian. What a pal. I was at the point of no return, however. The woman had finally cleared the security check. It was my turn. After all that sweating, I cleared it the first time. Don’t ask me why I didn’t set off alarms, but the best part of all was that Brian did. Yeah, sometimes I love payback, man.

The flight was pretty uneventful and it was, as unusual as it sounds, right on schedule. We got to Chicago and got settled into the hotel. Then, we headed over to the McCormick Convention Center to check on the progress of the booth assembly, and go through a dry run of the press briefing. The booth looked great so far. There were no problems there. But I have to tell you the worst thing about working with tekkies is that they just don’t get what kind of material to present to editors. These guys were writers, not chromatography scientists. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to drill that into their heads before the trade show. Now, I was at the trade show going through the dry run and they were editorializing again.

It started with the first guy. He started his portion of the presentation and made it so complicated I wanted to just tell him to STFU and let me do it. I remember telling him to stop, and then I told him if he went into this kind of an explanation half of the editors in the room would stand up and walk out. I remember saying, “Just tell them in layman’s terms what the products do and the benefit to the customer.”  That’s all they need to know. Every editor in the room would be given a package of detail, a copy of the presentation, and access to one-on-one discussions with the scientists in the room while they ate breakfast. Still, they insisted on cultivating what I like to call the deer-in-the-headlight effect.

After two hours of this torture, Brian and I headed out to dinner with Ed Black, the sales manager from Analytical Chemistry magazine. Ed was one of my best friends even though we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He was a true conservative from Georgia, now living in Connecticut. His wife Lynn was an airline stewardess, and she was just an awesome person. She was so funny and quick witted. We were close enough on the friendship scale that I’d go to Connecticut and spend the weekend. We had one rule: He and I never discussed politics. But that didn’t mean we didn’t jab each other good naturedly once in a while. We surely did.

I remember we got home in the early morning hours and we were wasted. Nevertheless, we had a free day Sunday. The only thing we had scheduled was a three o’clock review of the hospitality suite set up and a meeting with the convention center support staff. Brian and I made plans to go to this great flea market we saw in the local paper.

Our second close call: WTF were we thinking?

Brian and I ate breakfast and immediately hit the road. We hailed a cab and told the driver where we wanted to go. “Are you sure?” I guess I was kind of puzzled by his question.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Let’s go,” was my response.

When the driver had gotten us to our requested drop off point, he turned around and said to me, “Are you sure you want to be here? I’m not sure I should leave you here.”

We looked around. It looked perfectly fine to us. I replied, “Yeah, we’re good.”

I paid the driver and he drove off. We started heading down the street toward where the flea market was supposed to be when we saw this gang across the street with baseball bats. Yeah, that was comforting. The fact that they were looking at us was also comforting.

So, Brian and I started walking. “Can you see that they are walking with us across the street?”

“Yeah, Brian, I can see that.”

“You know, we’re dead meat.”

At that point, we started looking for somewhere safe to hide. Brian first suggested the church. I thought that might be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t been in a church for about a hundred years and was afraid of it collapsing, it didn’t seem like there was any action going on there and the doors might be locked. So, we started looking for any open stores we could find. We were sure we’d be safe there. Brian found, of all places, a hat shop. We talked about it for a few minutes, then the two of us broke into a hell-bent run and managed to get ourselves into the shop safely. We explained to the shop keeper what was going on and he started laughing.

“This isn’t a good place for you two. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. This may be an ordinary flea market, but this is not a safe part of town. The gangs don’t bother the shopkeepers, but they like to victimize visitors to the city.”

He was a really nice guy. He called a cab for us and told him to pick us up at the back of his shop. As fate would have it, the driver was the same guy who had dropped us off. When he saw us, he laughed.

“I told you, man, that I couldn’t figure out why you wanted to get out here. I don’t even like driving in here.”

We sat in the back seat and, once we were safely out of there, Brian and I started laughing. “How many days are we here for?”

I looked at him. “We’re here through Wednesday, why?”

“I can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble we can get ourselves into,” he responded.